Sabala’s wit has captured audiences across Twitch and TikTok who tune in to watch his delightfully chaotic playthroughs. This natural-born storyteller moves to the beat of his own drum, and nearly 50,000 followers are marching along. “I feel very lucky that [my audience] has found [my channel], that it is there for them, and that they’ve stumbled upon it in one way or another. I look at the numbers, and I think they align with what I’m putting out there,” Sabala said in an interview with Lifewire. “I think I got lucky to have some really awesome people to follow me.”
A Budding Star
Sabala was a theatrical, precocious child growing up in the picturesque suburbs of Texas. His father was a blue-collar welder, while his mother ran a daycare out of the family home. With his older brother in tow, they were the ideal American family reinforced by a tight-knit community. His brother was the quintessential athlete, while Sabala took a more creative route. Through his mother’s in-home daycare, the young Sabala was rarely without a playmate when it came to his budding interest in gaming. His older brother, though, was the catalyst to the streamer’s lifelong obsession. “I would experience a lot of games just watching him play. We would play together on games that had a two-player option, but I wasn’t very good at all,” he laughed. “I first started falling in love with gaming by watching him complete these games where I couldn’t.” Gaming was used as a diversion and salve throughout his youth, he said. His other hobbies were a bit more competitive. Choir and theater rounded out his interests as a child and would eventually lead him to his career as a professional actor. Shutdowns and the chaos of the last couple years tossed a curve into the would-be streamer’s career path as theaters around the country shut down. That’s when Twitch came into the picture. “I found myself at home all day every day with nothing to do, so I was gaming a lot… no one I knew was a big gamer which made me want to go find a community and people to hang out with,” he said. Sabala details how he had no real conception of content creation as a consumer. Outside of the few names who entered the pop culture lexicon, Sabala was unfamiliar with the personalities who made up this new platform he was about to dive into.
Fighting for His Spot
It’s no coincidence a live performer found interest in a live streaming outlet as opposed to the more popular, produced options. YouTube and Facebook felt too broad. Twitch, on the other hand, felt more niche–and exactly what he was looking for at the time. A platform dedicated to gaming. His theater background allowed him to excel in the personality aspect of streaming. However, finding an audience for initial engagement was harder than anticipated. “It’s this catch-22 where you need an audience to catch an audience. I had to find a way to advertise what I was doing on other social media platforms in order to really settle in,” the streamer mused. Content creation is a fickle industry, and for Sabala, that was a hard-fought lesson to learn. Through a combination of luck and hard work, the budding personality was able to leverage social media giant TikTok for exponential success, with videos getting as many as 460,000 views. Now, he enjoys an enthusiastic community that is even more rewarding because of the work it took to capture their imagination. From charity streams to playthroughs, his audience is intimate but fierce. It’s the crowning achievement of his trek through these previously uncharted waters. Silly, witty, and sincere are just three words to describe the Paulegon_Gaymer brand Sabala has curated over the past two years. While the algorithm gods may cause growth to ebb and flow, he’s dedicated to creating for himself by himself. “You can’t help but get that little twitch, and you have to go over with yourself that your worth is not the amount of people showing up. You have to let that barometer of your caliber go and enjoy the ride,” he said. “I’m creating a community; someplace that others might find a home for themselves in… and that’s enough.”
